How to Get More Visitors for Your Blog Without Social Media Marketing

Personally I hate the term “marketing” as well as combinations like search engine marketing. Even more than that I despise the term social media marketing which is an oxymoron in itself. I wonder why I forgot to add to this list of despicable terms.

In fact I do search engine and social media optimization instead of marketing.

The difference between social media marketing and optimization is like that of shareware and freeware. Marketing means selling the people stuff, optimization giving it away for free. In SEO 2.0 you get one step further: You give it away for free to get something else in return without tying both. So you do not just give away a freeware version to sell your professional software package.

SEO 2.0 is more like creative commons or open source: You give away everything to get something else: Reputation, attention, authority etc.

With these you can sell to other people while you do not take away anything from the people who have received from you.

So in SEO 2.0 you do neither sell not trade. You practice true altruism. Many people know already: Altruism is the better egoism. The more you give away the more you get back.

This is a fundamental rule of humanity ever since. Just think of your family or friends. The more love you give to your children the more you will get back. The more time you spend your friends the more friends you’ll have. Of course this rule has some limitations as you can’t just give everything to your children out of love as well as you need to identify who your real friends are and not feed people who start to exploit you (like most employers do). Nonetheless it works.

Let me tell you a little more about Germany: Here you do not have social media that really bring visitors to your site. Imagine no Digg, Reddit, Propeller etc.The biggest German Digg-like site will bring you as many visitors as the still nascent Mixx community or a niche social site like Sphinn. Also you can’t submit most of the German content to international social sites.

So how the hell can you get traffic for your blog without targeting social media at all? Yes, it’s possible. I do it for my blogging clients as well as for my private blogs.

Here is a short list of actions you can perform to get more visitors without social media marketing:

Look for other bloggers who write about the topic of your post, link to theirs and ping ortrackback them this way.

Comment on blog posts that cover a topic you already posted about explaining what is missing or why your perspective adds some crucial info. Add a link to the particular post. Bloggers and their readers appreciate that alike.

Find a topic everybody speaks about and write a resource or overview post with deeplinks to the posts. Do not trackback everybody, pings are OK, but people will notice anyway.

Look up Technorati and your referer stats to find out who linked to you and submit them to social media, of course only if the posting are more than just “look what I’ve found, click here”

Check which popular media support trackbacks and use them as your favorite news sources, refer to and trackback them once in a while (not daily)

As you see it’s basically about two things: Commenting and linking out. Becoming a part of the blogosphere. Your blog is not an island.

Blogging without using social media yourself for marketing purposes and the frowned upon self-submission has some major advantages. Just look at all the time you spend on social media while most of them even don’t respect you for doing it, either by their own policy, their hostile users, or both. So the ultimate goal should be to be able to stop using social media for SMM reasons at all.

The zen of SEO 2.0: Succeed on social media without self-submission.

As a proof of concept we do not submit our own stuff at the SEO 2.0 on Mixx although Mixx allows this. It works fine. In fact I almost never submit my postings, sometimes I won’t even vote for it. Still my blog posts have been submitted over 40 times to Mixx.

19 Responses

spostareduroApril 17, 2008 at 11:37 ·

Uh..of course this is so Stumbled and Sphunn.

It’s funny, this morning, before seeing this post, I was trying to filter through the clustered thoughts of my mind that needs to go from flying around in wild aimless circles, to the follow-through best referred to as a blog post.

I’m sort of stuck-like-Chuck on how to best utilize social media, new friendships that result, and it’s application to the still yet fearful ‘suits’ (businessman)..

The one thing that we always have within us, is what we GIVE. It’s the one aspect that is always consistent. (good, bad or indifferent)

I find it offensive to be attacked by marketing strategy over a spaghetti dinner and a glass of Perrier. There’s a time and a place for that. It compares to finding a message in my SU inbox by someone that has never spoken to me except to say “Good morning, please Stumble this, thanks!” I mean cmon..this is what is going on behind closed doors in social networking anymore (more often than not). Pop in and throw sheep at me. But dont do that. It’s selfish.

As far as submitting my own stuff in certain networks..it’s a shame, but there’s just not always the support between one another that should exist between friends. So, if you want to get something out there, as long as your own crap is not your main focus, I see nothing wrong with it..as long as it is not spammy marketing poo.

Thanks for the reference to my social networking happy place post. I still feel that way. I’d like to think that you’re one of the good guys Tad. The unselfish type that powerhouses by sheer ability, not riding the backs of others. :-)

Dave KApril 17, 2008 at 11:53 ·

Hi Tadeusz,
great post and insight in the comparison between optimization and marketing. However I think that the term marketing should be abolished from Search and Social Media. It should be SEC SMC: C standing for communication, as that what we all do. Marketing is strategy and communication is interactive. We communicate in our daily lives without having a strategy. We are engaged in the interactivity and the pleasure of talking, sharing and learning. I talk to my parents, friends without any business strategy in mind, thus marketing. So goes maybe for Search and social media. What about adding SEC and SMC to the list together with SEO for Search Experience Optimization

spostareduroApril 17, 2008 at 12:15 ·

I should probably clarify the statement I made “there’s not always support between one another that should exist between friends.”..My point was not to say that I haven’t been able to build upon traffic, because it seems that the traffic that ‘counts’ is building just fine.. Afterall, marketers are not my target audience. :-)

spostareduro: Self submission is not a crime, but it’s a little like cold calling people. I’m used to potential clients calling me. I don’t want ask for attention each time, I want people to be attentive before.

Dave: More great ideas I see. Consider writing a guest post on that for SEO 2.0

I don’t consider ‘marketing’ to be ‘selling’, to me it means ‘promotion’… and optimization, communication – whatever you want to call it, are all a subset of the same thing.

When you’re marketing a product – and it makes no difference if it is physical goods, information, a brand etc. – you’re trying to get it noticed in your target market (hence the terminology). Whatever happens after that (make a sale, subscribe to your RSS feed, champion the brand etc.) is a completely separate process and happens after the actual marketing/promotion/optimization/communication.

If you want to split things out in the terms you’ve listed, surely submitting an article to digg, mixx etc. is optimization if you have written the article specifically for that network (no different to SEO, just using a different platform).

I agree with your point in finding and commenting on blogs that are a part of the conversation you’re writing about – you don’t need to use the social networks to do this, but it makes your job a heck of a lot easier if you do. I’m spending a lot of time on Twitter at the moment, and my main goal is exactly that – find out what the hot topics are, what people are passionate about and formulate content around that.

Why write something and then go looking for conversations when you can actively seek out the discussions and put your spin on things before the blogsphere really heats up with it… it’s something I’m working on at the moment, I’m starting to get the hang of it :)

[…] How To Get More Visitors For Your Blog Without Social Media Marketing by Tad (the sombrero wearing SEO 2.0) […]

Dave kApril 17, 2008 at 14:52 ·

@Martin

Martin, Marketing has never been promotion, promotion is just one of the P in the mix: Think of the 7 Ps. Communication is completely different. An example: there is no degree in promotion at university, but you have a degree in Communication. Communication is about the “art”. Marketing is strategy. In relation to what Tadeusz said, if i understood right, it is about sharing… Has marketing ever been about sharing? No! Marketing has been about product, placement etc. Instead communication is about the sharing, to use a better word it is about “mediation”. And who say information says also “mediation”. We mediate through blogs, search engine. Look at it fromt he users or readers view and i think it makes more sense to talk about communication or mediation

@Dave – I disagree, even though one of the 7 p’s actually is promotion, all the others still deal with the how, who, where, why and what of your promotion… Websters dictionary even defines marketing as ‘Promotion’.

‘Sharing’ as you put it has been one of the key Internet marketing strategies for the last 5+ years, nearly every Web 2.0 company markets their product on this principle – give away their product or service, make it as useful as possible, grow their userbase – predominately by word of mouth – and then monetize through advertising, product sales or whatever.

‘Sales’ is obviously closely related to marketing (their goals need to be aligned), but it shouldn’t be confused as being the same thing (hence ‘Marketing and Sales’ – most companies selling something have both ‘marketing’ and ‘sales’ divisions, as they are two distinct processes).

‘Communication’ covers a lot more than just marketing (which is why you may need a separate degree) – marketing communication (eg. copywriting) is just a small subset (which would still be covered in any marketing degree).

Dave KApril 18, 2008 at 00:23 ·

Martin, I agree with you on the distinction that needed to be made between sales and marketing. We are playing on semantics concerning marketing, but behind the term it is a complete strategy. But when you communicate in your daily life, you don’t have any strategy. Do you? With friends? Sure when it comes to show the competitiveness among friends, we all adopt the smarter position, but again communicating and sharing an article on Mixx can be for the basis of information, and above all the “Pleasure” and “gratifications” that this act of sharing brings you. I’m looking at it from the user’s perspective. What the Web 2.0 companies do, they all have the word Marketing Strategy on top of their agenda, with established aims and objectives and for sure in any of their campaign they get it going with their SWOT and PESTLE Analysis which a user submitting a post will never do. That’s the beauty of a simple sharing act, I think. But I agree with you. Thanks for the nice exchange of ideas.

Boy…I’ve been away for a while and this post reminds me exactly why I love this place (kinda homesick).

The comments here have been brilliant too!

For me, marketing still has a long way to go before it truly fits in with social media (or new media). While many of the original principles still apply, technology has brought about so much newness that all types of media are scrambling to get it right, and I suspect it will be some time before they do.

I LOVE Dave K’s comment and can’t wait to see his guest post.

As a side note, I keep wondering why it is called social media; we’ve had ‘social media’ before – remember? Bulletin boards, CB radio’s – it’s not really new media, because with each incarnation, it’s new…but I digress…

I am reading through some of your posts. Interesting thoughts. But you have got to clean up some of your English usage. “Anyways” is slang; and you might want to increase your usage of the semicolon. I don’t mean to be mean, but just because it’s a blog doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be proofread. Thanks for listening.

Hey Carla, you may have noticed that I’m not a an English native speaker. I’m born in Poland and live in Germany, and English is my third language. So my English is far from perfect. So while your advice sounds rather condescending and is more useless than anything else I welcome any suggestions for concrete mistakes in the comments below.

baiaoguApril 22, 2008 at 03:42 ·

Commenting and linking out.
simple but brilliant ideas..
btw, i think your english is very good, atl least, i can understand what you mean.
haw-haw..

AnonApril 24, 2008 at 07:58 ·

“Did you ever see a-list bloggers submit their own postings?”

Yes, all the time. The Weblogs Inc. bloggers do it every day. DownloadSquad, Engadget, Autowhatever, TUAW. Daily.

Hey there, just read your reply to my post. I apologize, your English is actually so good, I thought you were a native speaker who was being lazy, and that’s why I scolded you. My bad. Many of us whose first language is English have fallen into slovenly habits, including bad grammar and use of profanity, especially in blogs. I apologize. :)